The Council Bluffs Linkages PEL study started quietly earlier this year and is now off and running with the first public outreach event held last week and a public survey that will be available until October 25, 2024:
https://fhu.mysocialpinpoint.com/council-bluffs-linkages
Rendering of the First Avenue trail and dedicated transit lane with stops from the West Broadway Corridor Plan, 2015
Just what is a PEL, you ask? It stands for Planning and Environmental Linkages, which is a fancy phrase to say that it is the next step in a federal planning process to apply for Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funding for a capital project. Specifically, a PEL represents a collaborative and integrated approach to decision-making that considers environmental, community, and economic goals early in the transportation planning process and uses this information, analysis, and products developed during planning to inform the environmental review process. This study will allow Council Bluffs to move on to a formal environmental study. PELs are used for a variety of transportation projects including highways, bridges, and transit. A similar PEL study, called TechLink, is currently being conducted for a light rail transit extension in Salt Lake City to the University of Utah technology campus.
The Council Bluffs Linkages PEL is focused on developing an enhanced transit corridor between downtown Omaha and downtown Council Bluffs, connecting to existing/future transit in downtown Omaha. Here is an overall timeline of the study:
The PEL study started in early 2025 by reviewing previous plans and setting up project goals and objectives. The study team began forming broad alternatives for connecting downtown Omaha and downtown Council Bluffs by fixed-guideway transit – a form of transit that requires more permanent construction with intensive stops or stations that use a technology like streetcar or Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). These technology options and alignment alternatives were presented at the public meeting held at the Council Bluffs library last week. The map below shows the study area with options for corridors and river crossings.
There were about 60 people from the public that attended the meeting, which was an open house format where attendees could see information at different poster boards and ask questions from City staff and the consultant team. The consultant team is led by Felsburg, Holt & Ullevig (FHU) and includes Benesch, Hg Consult, and Boothe Transit Consulting. In addition to the study area and alignment options, the public meeting had information on the different transit technologies being considered, maps for people to note important areas to consider, and street cross sections where attendees could piece together their ideal street character.
Crossing the Missouri River is one challenge that the study will work on and there are currently three areas being explored, each that could involve reusing an existing bridge or building a new bridge. A new transit and pedestrian bridge just south of I-480, following a similar path of the original Ak-Sar-Ben Bridge (Douglas Street) has been brought up before, which the study will take into consideration. Such a bridge would allow an ideal crossing of the Missouri River for transit in addition to providing another pedestrian connection across the river and linking more routes.
Another challenge is figuring out options for governance of the transit service – who would operate it and what authority would have control of the service – particularly hard because of the need to cross the state line. There are other examples in the country to follow and the conversation has started so a way to implement the service that works well and is easiest to implement can be figured out.
The project team will develop alternatives to analyze based on the public feedback. These will be refined through more public engagement and include transit technology options. This will be the focus of work early next year as we get into capital costs, ridership estimates, and operations costs.
So why build such a project, besides the fact that this has been a priority of Council Bluffs for the last decade or so? Note that this transit corridor has also been included in recent transit plans, such as MetroNEXT. The easy answer to this question is to better connect Omaha and Council Bluffs, providing better accessibility for people of all ages. With that comes with greater economic development opportunity (this is also a key piece of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce Core Plan), taking advantage of the ability to easily and quickly commute to downtown Omaha and UNMC job centers, plus being able to access entertainment destinations on either side of the river. The biggest draws of the project are the possibility to redevelop the Dodge Park area and use the First Avenue corridor (former Chicago and North Western railroad spur, which was actually a key piece of the original Transcontinental Railroad).
I hope you will stay tuned – and be engaged – as this study continues and this important project takes shape!
Eric Miller is a senior transit planner at Felsburg, Holt & Ullevig (FHU), a transportation engineering and planning company that was founded 40 years ago and has been in Omaha since 2004. Eric has a 20-year career in the transit industry that includes work in both the private and public sector and work on planning and implementing bus and rail projects for transit agencies all across the country.